MILWAUKEE – A four-game series can make that first game seem so, so long ago when the curtains finally fall on the final game.

When the final out was secured at Miller Park Sunday afternoon, it felt as if the Phillies were a million-billion miles removed from Thursday’s opener.

This was bad news for the Phils, who staggered to their third straight loss to the Brewers, this one a 9-1 humbling to former Phillie Kyle Lohse.

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When the Phils opened their 10-game road trip with a win Thursday, it pushed them above the .500 mark for the first time in 2013. A weekend of lost leads Friday and Saturday, and a big second inning Sunday that was fueled by a bottom half of a Brewers order that had no one hitting .220 or better this season shoved the Phils back into their mediocre seat.

“We’ve done that a couple times, haven’t we? That’s kind of the way we play,” Charlie Manuel said. “We won five, then all of a sudden we’ve lost three. We have to stay with it, though.”

This game was predicated by the first two innings.

In the top of the first the Phils (31-33) greeted Lohse with three hits from the first four batters. However, when Ryan Howard singled to right field, Michael Young – still batting leadoff, with Ben Revere behind him – tried to chug home and was cut down by a long and accurate frozen rope to the plate by right fielder Norichika Aoki.

“The guy made a perfect throw from right field,” said Young, who had two hits, but also grounded into his team-leading 13th double play of the season, second-most in the N.L. “The thing that is most disappointing is we didn’t get anybody out there after that. You want to have more opportunities.”

Young might be the only leadoff hitter in the game who would have been cut down in that situation. But this is life on a team whose roster has been poorly constructed from the start and has been further complicated by injuries.

The Phils had just two other hits the rest of the day – a two-out solo homer by catcher Humberto Quintero, and a ninth-inning infield hit by Young. True to form, Revere followed Young’s hit by grounding into yet another double play, as it’s difficult to fathom any team has a more epic pair of pathological ground-ball hitters at the top of their order than those two.

Pettibone (3-2) didn’t do himself any favors in the bottom of the second. Brewers center fielder Carlos Gomez started the inning curiously enough – with a bunt attempt. Pettibone fumbled the fielding assignment and was charged with an error. Still, this was leading to an anemic quintet of hitters who are a combined 93-for-464 (.200) at the plate this season. So you might have liked his chances for getting out of trouble. But no.

Instead, Yuniesky Betancourt singled to left, and Pettibone plunked Martin Maldonado to load the bases. After trading a run for a slow grounder from Juan Francisco, Pettibone gave up a two-run triple to Scooter Gennett for the first RBIs of his career. Lohse executed a smart safety squeeze to perfection, and somehow the Brewers had a 4-0 lead.

“I wasn’t doing the little things on my part,” said Pettibone, who also gave up a two-run bomb to Gomez in the sixth. “I didn’t field my position, letting the leadoff guy on. I was way ahead of the catcher and hit him to load the bases with nobody out. So that’s a disaster waiting to happen. I obviously have to limit those little things and limit the damage there.

“I think coming off the big series win against Miami at home, we had the momentum on our side, then we won the first game here. You want to at least split the series today, but I wasn’t able to do that. I dug a deep hole early for our team and we weren’t able to crawl out of it.”

The Phillies don’t seem to have a grasp on how to control damage or rebuild after it happens. At the moment it is a fragile team with fleeting resiliency.

“If we’re going to get where we want to be and be right in the middle of this thing in the stretch drive,” Young said, “we’re going to have to find a way to make adjustments during the game, not after the games. That’s what good teams do.

“A lot of the guys in this room have been there and done that. We have to make more in-game adjustments, not after the game, when the guys have a chance to talk about it.”